3Jan 14

What they had going for them, at the start, was instinct. The label – and manager – wanted a more street-smart first single: the group insisted otherwise. The band came up with the pell-mell structure of “Wannabe”, the tumble into rap at the end, and a nonsense-word that turned out to be a rocket-fuel hook. Every choice the right one.

But that first foot-down moment is the most important. The record label saw launching the Spice Girls as launching a band – something everyone involved (except the 5 women in the group) had done tens of times before. The group saw launching the Spice Girls as launching an idea, potentially far more powerful. And far more lucrative, of course. For that, the first single had to be a manifesto.

The more fans “Girl Power” reached, the more money it might make, and the more lives it might change – but this is true, in potential at least, of any music. What’s undeniable is that the combination of slogans and success guaranteed the band astonishing scrutiny – even among those who dismissed them, the Spice Girls were taken seriously in a way no pop band had been for years. People wanted ammo (there was plenty to find.) Picking apart the consequences and contradictions of the Spice brand became a critical cottage industry. Here I am, a 40-year-old man, and I’ve been lured aside by it in paragraph three.

Like most rock critics, I’m not a girl, and I don’t need any more power. Don’t trust me on this stuff. But it seems to me that “Girl Power” was about surviving – with a degree of independence and pride and fun – in the world as it was. It was never a Utopian project (like punk or sometimes rave) but it wasn’t purely an aesthetic one either (like Britpop). It was closer, perhaps, to Mod – celebrating economic strength, friendship and style in a world out to reduce you. It was grilled relentlessly, of course, because the marketing of it was so flagrant and successful and because the intended audience were small girls.

Was “Girl Power” an attempt at pop and personal transformation or a cynical plan to sell a remarkable amount of dolls? Both, obviously. We live in a world where women get to be the protagonists of adverts far more than of stories: the default way popular culture lets you reach a truly mass female audience is by selling to them. Once the Spice machine got going, there was plenty to sell. But to imagine that the Spice Girls – or any star since – must have unsullied motivation to have positive impact would be to imagine that young girls are a) uncritical idiots and b) not already used to constantly negotiating a world in which every pleasure or statement of independence is someone else’s weapon against them.

In the end we can only listen to the record, and see whether it hits its goal. Which was – simply – to refresh British pop music. Whatever happened next, does “Wannabe” sound and feel different enough to back up any claim it might make for itself? Absolutely, yes.

Generally speaking, the slicker the Spice Girls got, the less compelling they got. On “Wannabe” they are far from slick – they have a ragged chemistry, an obvious hunger and a song that’s a pile-up of hooks. They make nods in the direction of professional propriety – moving their best voices (Mels B and C) to the front and relegating their worst to a hollered “Slam, slam, slam, slam!”. They also have a production team tying the song together with a knees-up piano riff which adds Madness to the list of Spicecestors. They have the one-take video, which is inspired – it cements the idea that all this is somehow spontaneous, and also that this is an origin story.

Which it is – one of the most assured origins in pop culture, the strongest intro to a group since Fantastic Four #1. The actual work of character-building doesn’t happen much in “Wannabe” – or anywhere else in record – being mostly a marketing and branding thing and not always very helpful for what’s on record. Here the solo introductions are kept to a garbled one liner in Mel and Geri’s rap – the thrust of the song is its theme: power through friendship and fun.

So “Wannabe” starts with call-and-response – a riddle which seems annoyingly like a tease. What’s a “zig-a-zig-ahh?” – the point is that you only know if you’re one of the gang, and the rest of the song is laying that out: prove you’re part of the friendship circle, and maybe we’ll let you in on it. But you won’t find out just by asking. There’s a lot of other lines in the song you might take and hold on to as yours – “If you want my future, forget my past” – but the core of it really is as simple as ‘friendship never ends’.

There’s a few reasons why they pull it off. It’s urgently effervescent – under three minutes, from the opening footsteps and laughter to the final echoed “lover”, and the economy makes it a peep at a world you want to spend more time in. Great pop songs about friendship – girls’ friendships in particular – are rare enough that making a fuss of it helped “Wannabe” stand out. The group re-discovered the bubblegum tweenager audience – I think Britpop helped the Spice Girls enormously, by giving the impression of a world of celebratory, hooks-first pop then veering rockwards just as the next generation of fans wanted to play.

But most of all “Wannabe” convinced because the Spice Girls honestly sounded like friends. A group that’s cool is useful in pop, but what’s even rarer and more effective is when a group feels like they’re having more fun than anyone else in the world. What British pop bands from the Beatles to One Direction have realised is that you win the opportunity to transcend your moment by camaraderie as much if not more than by breaking ground. Innovation can be owned – and that way lies splits, lawyers and footnotes. Cameraderie belongs by nature to the group, is harder to fake and a lot more difficult to copy. The Spice Girls, at first, knew that better than anyone.

Comments

Sorry, I’ll be absolutely fucking boring and give this a six! It wouldn’t strike a chord with people like me in 1996 or now, and coincides with some very uncomfortable times in my life – especially starting at secondary school (Bowland High, Grindleton, back in Lancashire), with all the repeated tsunamis of confusion and dislocation for an 11-year-old going on 51 with Asperger’s. Due to that and doting parents, I lived a sheltered life and didn’t even know what most swear words meant back then, and in the “facts of life” talks I was one of the kids who needed to run out of the class to be sick. Which obviously didn’t get me off on the right foot making friends. In a short while, though, things would change radically.

For the record, though my opinions on girls were extraordinarily platonic back then, Emma was my favourite back then, closely followed by Geri, the other three pretty “meh”, though I guess the rule of thumb says Mel C was obviously the one most of would choose for a night out with.. and this was a pretty sharp statement of intent as a pop group as a part of a crew and a group of friends. Their music and all-conquering impact where NOBODY COULD SPEND TWO SECONDS OF A CONVERSATION WITHOUT BRINGING THEM UP TENUOUSLY would soon become rancid though. And Ginger’s ham-fisted political bandwagon-jumping.. I ask you.

I think I’ll probably be invalidated of an opinion on this chart run anyway, back then I remember watching a highlights show of a Sky Premier League match (a 0-0 draw between Sunderland and West Ham!) soundtracked by Kula Shaker – Hey Dude. I thought “Wow, this song’s brilliant, they really mean it, man – they’re going to be the next Led Zeppelin. I bet they’re going to stick around for a long, long time. The lead singer seems really sincere, gotta love a rough-and-tumble Mancunian.”

In early 1997, when this made #1, I was blissfully unaware of the song. Oh I knew of the Spice Girls craze, and I knew there was a “Wannabe,” but at that point I was an innocent 6th grader…living, drinking, eating Beatles, and completely out of the popular-music mix. By the middle of that year, I entered junior high, where it was much harder to escape popular music. *BUNNY ALERT* was on the radio by then, so I heard that before ever hearing “Wannabe.” It was a song I vowed to hate long before hearing, so my hate is nowhere as big as for “Macarena,”* or the bunnied Oklahoma brothers soon to follow. I do remember my brother hating it because it reminded him too much of a song he really liked (“Connection” by Elastica. Hmmmm…) However, as a chapter in U.K. pop music, it has its place, and I respect all its defense on the board. Maybe I ‘had to be there’…

* Good work at keeping that dance craze at bay, U.K.! I can’t tell you how much I hated that craze. And how it popped up in music classes, P.E. classes, etc. I basically either snuck out of the room or hid against a wall instead.

Oh Christ. You’ve achieved the impossible. You’ve got me liking the Spice Girls. I avoided them back then, probably because of the hype or maybe out of some kind of internalised homophobia. But while reading this and your Say I’ll Be There reviews, I listened to the tracks. Damn, they’re GOOD.

I have just been watching the excellent Kathleen Hanna doc, ‘The Punk Singer’, and there is some great archive footage from about 1991 of someone putting together a Bikini Kill fanzine. The cover line: “Girl Power”.

I watched the clip from ‘The Punk Singer’ again, and it’s Hanna herself making the fanzine, so I guess she has as good a claim as anybody to be the godmother of Girl Power.

What’s not clear, though, is whether any of the SGs or anyone in their team was aware of and consciously emulating Bikini Kill. Clearly what we need is a Greil Marcus type to trace the connections between militant punk in the Pacific North-West in the early 1990s and chart domination in Britain about five years later.

Irritating then – mediocre now! Little surprise then that it should become a rallying point for the poptimists. The era of Kula Shaker, Cast and The Seahorses may well have pointed to a desperately needed counter to this critical mass of backlogged shit, but ‘Wannabe’ wasn’t the answer that’s for sure.

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I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!

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